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The Ramones Place in Rock History

This is a chapter, written in 2019, for a book that never came to be.

     The Ramones represent a pivotal moment in the history of rock music. For a moment, all music that came before them was irrelevant, all after bore their resemblance. Specifically, the Ramones usher in the era of punk rock. Prior to the Ramones there were punk bands, they simply weren’t labeled as such. In the Ramones’ wake there were punk bands, labeled as such, expected to present themselves as such. In this chapter I first present a discussion of genre and art worlds as they relate to rock music, then discuss the New York rock scene that birthed the Ramones, the first four years of the Ramones (the years that changed the direction of rock music), and, finally, punk rock in the years following the emergence of the band.

Music Genres and Art Worlds

Fundamental to the study of genre, argues Deena Weinstein (1991), are the social transactions between artists, audiences, and mediators. Artists, of course, are those who make the art; in the case of rock music the basic artistic unit is the musician. Rock, however, is not a solo art, though some musicians do play alone. More likely, however, rock musicians form bands, the genre’s actual basic artistic unit.

      Rock bands perform for audiences who buy merchandise, recordings, t-shirts and hats emblazoned with band’s names, and attend concerts. Fans read articles about bands, genres, and scenes. They watch videos. Artists’ performances and audience’s consumptions, writes Weinstein, constitute an interactional transaction.

      Mediators, the third player in the popular music transactional triad, bring artists and audiences together. A lay term for mediators is the “music industry.” Hardcopy magazines and fanzines, in the 1970s when the Ramones emerged, provided photographs, interviews, and articles about bands. Nowadays most of these sources take the form of websites and blogs, sometimes run by musicians themselves, sometimes by fans, sometimes by professional writers. Recording companies recruit and record bands, and then press records and distribute them to the public at large; nowadays the hardcopy recording industry has given way to the cyber world of streaming and downloadable songs and records. In this latter case, then, the computer and software industry are mediators bringing fans and artists together.

      Artists, audiences, and mediators interact based on understood sonic, verbal, and visual codes. Sonic codes refer to the sounds associated with genre presentations. Rock music, for instance, typically features guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, played loud in 4/4 time. Verbal codes most obviously have to do with the typical lyric content of songs within a genre. Verbal codes might also include band and song names, artist stage names, names of recordings, and the names fans give to themselves (e.g. Deadheads). A genre’s visual dimension includes the look of artists and audience members as well as visual art that accompanies artists’ sonic and verbal presentations, like album art and stage design.

      Finally, Weinstein, by way of Ronald Byrnside (1975), lays out a plan for understanding the emergence and careers of music genres. In the formative stage a genre does not yet have a name or recognizable codes. There are bands, songs, and recordings that, in retrospect, exhibit qualities of the genre, but at the time fans, musicians, and mediators don’t label the music as being in the genre, nor do they distinguish the music as separate from the artistic sources from which it springs. In the crystallization phase artists, fans, and mediators self-consciously label unique sounds and images as being indicative of the new genre; sonic, verbal, and visual codes come to represent artists and fans as being part of one genre and not another. Fans, artists, and mediators exclude those who don’t exhibit agreed upon codes from the genre. Finally, in decay genre codes become predictable[i]. Some artists, mediators, and fans remain loyal to the genre, playing predictable songs in predictable fashion, but the genre, as a whole, is no longer new (though it may remain relevant). 

      Howard S. Becker provides another way of understanding art and genre in Art Worlds (1982). An art world, argues Becker, consists of all the people connected to the production, distribution, and consumption of a given type of art. Rather than having three players in the artistic transaction, as Weinstein does, Becker suggests two: artists and support personnel. Artists, of course, directly produce the art. They are painters, sculptors, writers, and, in the case of rock music, musicians and bands. Typically, however, artists can’t go it alone. Unless they want to create their music from scratch, using homemade instruments and performance venues, they need all kinds of help. Support personnel such as instrument makers make instruments in factories that are tooled for making them. They are sold in stores (or online) and delivered via channels made for such deliveries and sales. Others make instrument tuners that clip on to the end of guitars, calibrated to detect whether the instrument’s strings are vibrating at a frequency deemed appropriate to be called a note.

Artists and support personnel act based on an ever changing set of norms and values, similar to Weinstein’s genre codes. But Becker’s argument focuses on art worlds more broadly than genre alone. For instance, guitar strings are produced to make standard sounds. Guitars themselves are made to accommodate said strings. Music stores are set-up in ways that allow customers to peruse, try out, and buy instruments. They stock instruments they imagine customers are looking to buy: Fender and Gibson guitars, for instance. The list is endless. The people who make up art worlds interact in predictable fashions that end up giving the worlds particular looks or sounds or verbal contents. This is how we know any particular interactional world exists.

This same logic holds true for music genres. People recognize genres because of the typical way that artists and support personnel associated with them do things. Rock musicians play certain instruments – guitar, bass, drums – in a certain fashion – loud, 4/4. Instrument makers, in the form of support personnel, create instruments that typical rock musicians want to use. Touring bands bring along roadies who know the ins and outs of typical instruments and stage set-ups. Rock bands sing about typical things: sex, drugs, rock and roll. Audience members purchase tickets in ways typical for a rock show and behave in ways typical for fans at typical rock shows: dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, smoking. The list goes on. Witnessing and participating in these typical interactions is how people recognize the existence of worlds and genres.

Since genres and art worlds are interactional products, they are never static. People play typical instruments in new ways, for instance, or they combine visual, verbal, and/or sonic codes from disparate genres or worlds in ways that create new genres: rock and roll evolves from country and rhythm and blues, to rock, and splinters into sub-genres like psychedelic, punk, and alternative. Some folks do their best to maintain the integrity of crystallized genres (think Eric Clapton and the blues), others do their best to destroy the old and create something new (think Jimi Hendrix and the blues).

In a word, art worlds and music genres are no different than most other aspects of human life. They are constructed, maintained, and destroyed through social interaction.

Formation: The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls

The importance of the Ramones in the history of rock lies with their relationships to earlier music genres and art worlds and their influences on those that came after. The pivotal historic moment for the band lasts from their emergence on the New York City scene in 1974 through their first four albums – Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), Rocket to Russia (1977), and Road to Ruin (1978).

The rock and roll torch handed to the Ramones originates with the Velvet Underground and runs through the New York Dolls; it flourishes early in the art community surrounding Andy Warhol and moves through the rock scene centered at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. It includes bands like Suicide, the Talking Heads, the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, the Dead Boys, Television, Kiss, and Blue Oyster Cult. In turn, after the release of four seminal albums and performing hundreds of live dates, the band passes the torch, rechristened “punk rock,” to a new set of bands and support personnel embracing new sets of sonic, visual, and verbal codes: the Clash, Sex Pistols, and Damned in England; X, the Weirdos, Germs, and Black Flag in America.

Punk rock’s formative stage begins in the New York underground art scene hosted by Andy Warhol and his Factory’s house band, the Velvet Underground (VU). Warhol served as a support personnel benefactor; he gave the band a space to practice and play, a live performance vehicle in the form of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and funded their debut album (The Velvet Underground and Nico 1967).  Warhol’s funding of the band and his popularity in the pop art world, along with his creative spirit, allowed the VU free artistic reign on the album, which contains songs with lyrical content at odds with much popular music at the time: direct references to hard drug use (“Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man”) and unconventional sexualities (“Venus in Furs” and “There She Goes Again”) are grounded in New York City street culture rather than in the puppy love of middle-class teenagers as was common for rock songs of the day.

Sonically, the Velvet Underground presented something new and challenging. Comprised of Lou Reed (guitar, vocals), John Cale (viola, keyboards, bass), Sterling Morrison (guitar), and Moe Tucker (drums), the band created sounds that oscillated between gritty and smooth, grating and sugary, unlistenable and pop. John Cale played his viola in a drone, creating sonic fields for Reed and Morrison to improvise in. Tucker held a hypnotic, steady beat with a minimalist drum set consisting of tom toms, snare, and upturned bass played with mallets rather than sticks. Though mesmerizing in retrospect, the band’s records went largely ignored and unloved in their day.

The Velvet Underground’s use of visuals was also ahead of their time and contrary to much of the visuals of the day. As part of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic inevitable, an art event of sorts, the band presided over a mélange of auditory and visual stimuli; think of the Acid Tests on Heroin. The musicians themselves presented a cooler-than-thou New York City attitude, wearing their hair long, sporting dark shades, leather, and visages that would in later incarnations of punk rock be described as blank. Light shows and Warhol’s films were projected on the walls and ceilings while the VU played and Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Melanga danced dominant. As with the sound of the band, the viduals of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable were at odds with the popular performing arts of the day.

The Velvet Underground set the stage for the emergence of a rock music scene in New York City where none had been; there simply wasn’t much happening in the Big Apple in the late-sixties and early-seventies. The New York Dolls emerged in this environment. Formed in 1971, the Dolls were originally linked to the emerging glam rock scene inhabited mostly in England by David Bowie and Mott the Hoople, as well as with the big time pub rock scene represented by Rod Stewart and the Faces. Not surprisingly, they were as popular in Britain as they were in the United States.

It is easy to see how the New York Dolls were accepted into the English hard rock glam seen. Musically they had a sloppy raunchy swing ala the Rolling Stones. They played the blues and classic American rock and roll. Like the Stones they had swagger, daring audiences to ignore them. David Johansen was Mick Jagger to Johnny Thunder’s Keith Richards. They dressed in what outsiders saw as drag, what the dolls say was simply how they tramped around NYC: in make-up, teased hair, platforms, and glittery spandex pants and tops, the Dolls looked every bit like big city street walkers. Lyrically, well, they sang of drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

The Dolls cut their performing chops in 1972 in New York City. They held residencies at Mercer’s Art Center and Max’s Kansas City in the summer and early fall of that year. In October they toured England, opening for Lou Reed and the Faces. The band was the it show for hip young New Yorkers. A who’s who of the city’s soon-to-be dubbed punk rock scene went to these gigs: Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye (soon to form the Patti Smith Group), Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell (who would form Television), and members of the soon to be Ramones. Johnny Ramone (2012) writes

The New York Dolls really did it for me. I saw them over and over, twenty times in all, starting on August 15, 1972, at the Mercer Arts Center. (P. 34).

In 1973 the Dolls played more NYC residencies, one gig at the Kenmore Club in Boston, and an American tour in support of Mott the Hoople. The Dolls were a band that Johnny, as the Ramones leader, would emulate. They played hard-driving rock and roll and looked great. Speaking of Johnny Thunders, Johnny writes, “He looked so cool, I figured that he had to be decent because image was so important in rock and roll, and he had that” (ibid).

Crystallization: The Ramones

      The four who would form the Ramones – John Cummings (Johnny), Thomas Erdelyi (Tommy), Douglass Colvin (Dee Dee), and Jeffrey Hyman (Joey)[ii] – grew up together in the Forrest Hills neighborhood of Queens, City of New York. Born in the late-forties and early-1950s, the original members of the band were at the right place at the right time to catch rock and roll and rock music’s greatest acts. Johnny writes of how he gained access to early rock and roll 45s through the “nameless guy” who stocked the jukebox at his parent’s bar in Stewart Manor; Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino were all part of Johnny’s collection. Joey and his brother Mickey[iii] filled their early collections with singles by Lesley Gore, the Crystals, Dion, and Boris Pickett (Leigh 2009). Of course, New York City was a stop for all touring bands, and Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy caught their shows. Johnny saw the Rolling Stones in 1964, as well as the Beatles in this same year at their famed Shea Stadium concert. He also saw the Who, sat front and center at the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Black Sabbath, the Doors (10 times), the Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper, the MC5, and the Stooges. While Joey wasn’t allowed to go to the Beatles show, he and Mickey did catch gigs by Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Ronettes, and the Animals.

This is all to say that the members of the Ramones had solid rock music educations. The bands they saw ranged from Motown pop and soul to hard rock psychedelic, many of them had strong followings in the United States and England. They didn’t stick to just the most popular touring bands of the era, either, they also went into the city and caught local bands at the clubs.

Johnny studied the bands he saw. He paid attention to the things they did well, and those they didn’t. How did they dress? How did they stand on stage? Did they banter with the audience? How did that go over? Johnny took detailed mental notes of these things and incorporated them into his directorship of the Ramones.

The young Ramones were not only interested in music, they were also fashion conscious. Johnny writes of being enamored of Rolling Stone Brian Jones’ style, trying to imitate him in his own dress. All of them enjoyed clubbing in the city, trying out the various and fickle styles that came and went in the scenes they frequented. As the seventies began, Tommy, Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee found themselves visually emulating the burgeoning glam rock fashions championed by the New York Dolls but also worn by the likes of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop.

Johnny and Tommy were about the same age, while Joey and Dee Dee were a few years younger. They hung out together sometimes as friends, sometimes as drug buddies, and sometimes as band mates, for much of their youth and young adulthood, though Joey’s younger brother ran more with this crowd than did Joey. It was as young men working construction that Johnny and Dee Dee started keeping serious company with each other, drinking beers at lunch breaks. It was Tommy who suggested Dee Dee and Johnny start a band together. They resisted his urgings for a few years. Johnny had tried his hand at playing bass guitar in a band with Mickey a few years earlier and didn’t find it fulfilling, he didn’t think he had what it took to be a rock and roller. He and Dee Dee just wanted to be “normal,” not pop music weirdoes.

It was after seeing the New York Dolls that Johnny and Dee Dee decided they could start their own band. After all, the Dolls weren’t good musicians. Instead, they had passion, style, and swagger. Johnny, familiar as he was with the art of rock, saw in the Dolls the complete package, a performance art powerhouse. “It was an event,” wrote Johnny (ibid). “This was entertainment, not musicianship and people who take themselves too seriously. And for me, it was always about entertainment” (p. 34); Johnny never wavered from the idea of the Ramones as entertainers.

The Ramones began with Dee Dee and Johnny only, both playing guitar. Tommy would be their “manager and producer”. Soon, their friend Richie was brought in to play bass, with Joey on drums. Richie, who wasn’t able to get the hang of the bass, was dropped from the band and Dee Dee moved to bass. They played as a power trio for a couple months, even putting on a live gig for invited friends.

Things weren’t gelling, however. While Dee Dee and Johnny were improving on their instruments, Joey wasn’t, Johnny refused to sing, and Dee Dee couldn’t sing and play his bass at the same time. Johnny was ready to kick Joey out of the band. Tommy convinced him to move Joey to the front, as the lead singer, freeing Dee Dee from singing duties. Johnny did not think Joey was handsome enough to be a lead singer, but he did like the geek factor he brought up front, and Tommy said Joey brought an Alice Cooper type image to the band. They auditioned a number of people to replace Joey on drums but, in the end, Tommy took the job. The historically most recognized line-up of the Ramones was now in place.

Dee Dee was the first to adopt the surname Ramone. He heard that Paul McCartney used the name when checking into hotels. The rest of the band adopted the moniker soon after. It gave them a sense of unity, an image, a way for fans to remember them.

Sonically, the early Ramones were limited by their inabilities to play their instruments. They wrote short songs with simple chord structures, one or two songs each rehearsal. According to Johnny (ibid), the songs were “pure rock and roll” (p. 43). The band did not feel any responsibility to the blues, that was a generation before them. Instead, they took their cues from the Stones and Stooges, the MC5 and New York Dolls. These bands paid homage to the blues, the Ramones to them.

The trademark look the band ended up with took a few months to nail down. Following the Dolls, the Ramones donned a glam look in their early gigs: spandex pants and glitter. Tommy suggested that this look might not go over so well in middle America. Johnny was already wearing a leather jacket and the rest of the band followed suit. It was important that kids coming to Ramones gigs could dress like the band; jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes would work well in mid-America, a section of the country the band would have to conquer if they wanted to succeed. This would be their “uniform,” as Johnny calls it (ibid p. 46); a uniform that defined not just the Ramones, but the punk rock genre for a generation to come.

Johnny applied to the Ramones what he had learned in his mental studies of other rock bands. Never tune your guitar on stage, for instance, was a conscious decision, as was start the show as soon as you walk on stage, Johnny and Dee were to move to the front of the stage, and then back, never cross the stage, Joey should stand, glued to the microphone, the entire gig; the speakers and amps were measured out so the band would not look “lost” on stage. The Ramones, Johnny and Tommy in particular, had a vision of the band as professional entertainers, and a “look” was integral to this vision.

The Ramones early song lyrics were as minimalist as their sound and look. One of the first two songs they wrote, “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You,” consists of two lines – “I don’t wanna walk around with you/So why you wanna walk around with me” – arranged in a single verse, repeated four times, broken only by one “I don’t wanna go out with you,” and one “alright.” “Blitzkrieg Bop,” the lead track on their first album, was slightly more complex, with three verses, repeated three times in 2:15, punctuated with what became a Ramones calling-card, “Hey ho, let’s go!”

In 1974 Hilly Krystal opened a down and out dive bar, CBGB & OMFUG[iv], to a host of unknown rock and roll bands: Blondie, Television, the Patti Smith Group, Talking Heads. The Ramones first gig at the club was on August 16, 1974. They would play 25 shows there in 1974 and another 33 in 1975 (Ramones 2019). CBGB became synonymous with the Ramones, and they with it. Images abound of the band standing outside, leather jackets and too-small t-shirts, posing cool.

Early Ramones’ shows at CBGB attracted few people, a handful of friends were all. Truth be told, the band was not ready for larger audiences at this point. Video of an early show finds Tommy, Dee Dee, Joey, and Johnny stuttering through their set (Sundaybop 2013). They start songs and stop. They argue about which songs to play. Joey does some awkward leg kicks and falls to his knees a time or two, behaviors Johnny will disabuse him of in the future. These first Ramones’ gigs rarely lasted more than twenty minutes partly because that’s all the material they had, partly  because in Johnny’s mind, if the Beatles show at Shea Stadium lasted only thirty minutes, the Ramones need not be longer; always leave the audience wanting more, only show your strengths.

The Ramones were a breath of fresh air in New York’s rock and roll scene. The speed of their songs, their look, and the goofiness in their lyrics signaled a new direction for the genre. The fine-tuned elitism of the popular rock bands of the day was seen by punk rockers as stale. The Ramones, as well as other bands, fans, and mediators in the burgeoning NY punk scene represented a new generation. Their influence was immediate.

In January, 1976, based on the strength of their lives shows, the Ramones signed a deal with Sire Records. They recorded their eponymously titled debut LP in February. It was also at this time they started playing shows outside of New York City. They made it up and down the Eastern Seaboard – New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut – and as far west as Cleveland in the first half of the year. Following the release of The Ramones on April 23, and with label support, they expanded their tour range. First, on July 4 and 5, they played in London, opening for the Flamin’ Groovies. Here they bummed around with members of London’s burgeoning punk rock scene. Members of the Damned, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash went to these shows. In August they played 13 shows in California, mostly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, meeting up with important KROQ radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer (ibid p. 58). The members of the Ramones were cognizant of the fact that a new genre of rock was emerging and they were at its forefront; musicians and fans around the country and world were jumping on the bandwagon.

The Ramones consists of 14 songs in 30 minutes, the longest (“I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement) being 2:38. The songs are hard but not heavy; loud guitars set to a rapid rhythm with some seriously funny lyrics about topics like teenage male-to-male prostitution (“53^rd and 3^rd”), horror movies (“Chain Saw,” “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement”), alternative drug use (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”), love desired (“I Wanna be Your Boyfriend”), and love denied (“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You”). “Judy is a Punk” announces the crystallization of a genre: punk rock. The Ramones was a set of songs that harkened back to the early days of rock and roll, mixed with the pop of Motown, and spit through the heavy rock of the late-60s and early-seventies; it was a sound and feel unlike any before.

An attractive element of the Ramones, and The Ramones, was humor. They were goofy, though, as with any successful band, they were committed and always professional about their project. Should people take these guys seriously? Were they the real deal? Steve Albini, recording engineer and founding member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Shellac, tells of how he heard the first Ramones record on a school bus ride in Montana when another kid was playing the cassette. He thought it was one of the funniest things he had ever heard. He was enthralled by “this really terrible band that were making records.”

I lived by the record for about six months. Initially it was comedy, it was a gag. We just thought, “Oh, this is that goofy record.” But then it developed to the point where suddenly it made sense to me. I thought, “Yea, this is the perfect form of rock music” (Smith-Lahrman 2010).

What Albini makes clear is that the Ramone’s humor was part and parcel of a larger package; the Ramones were a perfect rock band for a new generation of fans.

The Ramones topped off 1976 by recording Leave Home, their second record, in October; it was released on January 10, 1977. Most of the songs on the album were written at the same time as those on The Ramones, and they sound like it. They are fast and direct, especially compared to the era’s Album Oriented Radio fair of Bob Dylan (Desire), Peter Frampton (Frampton Comes Alive!), or Wings (Wings at the Speed of Sound).[v] Themes on Leave Home range from misogynist horror movie schlock (“Glad to See You Go,” “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl,” “You Should Never Have Opened That Door”), to general weirdness (“Pinhead,” “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”), drug use (“Carbona Not glue”), sugar-coated love ballads (“I Remember You,” “Oh Oh I Love Her So”),and comments on the Viet Nam war (“Commando”). All of the songs are characterized by Johnny’s down stroke power chords, a signature style that came to epitomize punk rock.

Dee Dee and Joey wrote most of the songs on these first two records, and knowing the biographies of these two, the songs make sense (Ramone 1997; Leigh 2009).[vi] Dee Dee came from a broken military family, first living in Berlin, then moving with his mother to Queens. He became a teenager of the streets of NYC upon arrival. He did heroin before hitting adulthood (he never really stopped), hitchhiked to California at 16, and came back to New York to live the underside of rock and roll. Joey battled many illnesses, physical and mental, growing up, and was a “weird” kid who was constantly bullied. Songs like “Now I Wanna be a Good Boy” hit at the heart of the emotional turmoil Dee Dee was experiencing at the time. In it he sings of desperately wanting to do the right thing while in the same breath wanting to run away from home and be alone. “Pinhead,” though weird on the surface, is a tale of awkwardness and loneliness. From the opening refrain (“Gabba Gabba we accept you, We accept you, One of us”) the song tells of someone who recognizes his own hideousness (he’s a pinhead) while pining for a care giver for whom he has a crush.[vii] Dee Dee, as well as Joey, it seems, pined for normal lives they never attained.

“Carbona Not Glue,” the fifth track on Leave Home, was replaced on a second issue of the album after the Carbona company threatened to sue the band over the use of the trademark name. Its replacement was “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” a song that also appears on the band’s third record, Rocket to Russia. Again, here is the band self-referencing the scene they created. The song name drops a number of scenes Sheena could have participated in (surfing, disco), but she chooses punk rock, she chooses the Ramones.

The title of the Ramones’ second record refers to the band, well, leaving New York, striking out for tours around the country and the world. They were now professional rock musicians, even if their pocket books did not reflect it. They left the scene they spawned and were spreading the punk rock word around the world.

Rocket to Russia, the Ramones second release of 1977, is their masterpiece; Johnny considers it their best record, giving it an ‘A+’ (Ramone 2012). Along with “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” the album contains “Teenage Lobotomy,” another punk rock classic. Lyrically, “Teenage Lobotomy” is in the same vein as “Pinhead” from Leave Home. Singer is messed up from being exposed to DDT, a chemical used to clear foliage in Vietnam. Therefore, listeners must assume that Singer is a veteran. He is a “real sickie” who has no mind or cerebellum. Nonetheless, he believes all the girls are in love with him. Like the protagonist in “Pinhead,” listeners are forced to feel sorry for the character in “Teenage Lobotomy.” He has no chance with the girls. The song resonates with punk rockers because, along with Singer (Joey), they feel like outcasts, like the ones who have no chance with society’s “normal” girls.

Other songs on Rocket to Russia highlight the band’s eclectic take on rock history. “Rockaway Beach,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” and “Cretin Hop” showcase their pop sensibilities, the latter of the three also falling into the category of “weird” like “Teenage Lobotomy.” “We’re a Happy Family” is a story of a dysfunctional family, a story many New York City punk rock kids could relate to. “I Wanna be Well” feels like Dee Dee crying for help, wanting to kick his drug habits; DDT pops up again.

The Ramones filled their early albums with repetition, brands. The number of songs with “wanna” in the title, or those with sing along chants, are numerous; there are songs labeling girls as “punks” or “headbangers.” The band’s look is a brand. Johnny was sure this needed to happen. Like any business, bands need signature sounds and looks. To this end, the cover shot on Rocket to Russia is almost identical to that on their first record. The band looking tough in their ripped jeans and leather jackets, leaning against a building in a scruffy-looking alley, vacant smirks on their faces. They are a punk band, no doubt about it.

Tommy Ramone left the band with the completion of Rocket to Russia, sort of. He coproduced each of their first three records and stayed on to produce number four, Road to Ruin. He wouldn’t produce another Ramone’s album until 1984’s Too Tough to Die. After trying out more than twenty drummers, the band chose former Voidoids drummer Marc Steven Bell, newly christened Marky Ramone. He would play with the band for most of the rest of their twenty-year career.

Road to Ruin is, in Johnny’s opinion, “the last of the great Ramones albums until Too Tough to Die” (ibid p. 154). It contains two classics, “I Wanna be Sedated,” and “She’s the One,” along with a number of songs – “Don’t Come Close,” “I Don’t Want You,” and “Questioningly” – with great pop sensibilities. There are also a number of punk rock songs properly defined: “I Just Want to Have Something to Do,” “I Don’t Want You,” “I’m Against It,” “Go Mental,” and “Bad Brain” set a formula that bands like Bad Religion and Bad Brains would pick up in a few years.

While they had become the embodiment of punk rock, the Ramones were maintaining their classic rock and roll sensibilities. Examples of this are the choices of cover songs on their first four albums. The Ramones has “Let’s Dance,” a song first recorded in 1962 by Chris Montez, written by Jim Lee. As the name suggests, “Let’s Dance” is a dance song, a pop tune for teenagers. The band’s other covers carry the same pop weight: “California Sun” on Leave Home, first recorded by Joe Jones in 1961 and then by the Rivieras in 1964 (written by Kenny Glover); “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Surfin’ Bird” from Rocket to Russia; and “Needles and Pins” from Road to Ruin.[viii] All of these songs were originally recorded between 1958 and 1964, a period of time when rock and roll as originally presented by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis was transforming into rock, already or soon to be represented by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. They are songs of innocence and youthful fun, romance and dreams of faraway places, heartbreak, goofiness. The Ramones were part of a similar changing of the guard. They signaled the end of the psychedelic blues rock era popular in the late-sixties and early-seventies, and ushered in the new punk rock era. The early Ramones records were full of innocence, fun, and goofiness, too, albeit presented from the perspective of hardened New York City street life rather than the idealized teenage romances of the bands they covered. Fifteen years of rock turned flirtation into desperation, surfin’ birds into cretins.

The cover art for Road to Ruin was drawn by fan Gus MacDonald. It is a drawing of the band in all their punk rock glory: on stage wearing ripped jeans, t-shirts, leather jackets, tennis shoes, a New York City skyline behind them. The drawing, though, is in cartoon style with primary colors and distorted proportions. It perfectly captures the silly and humorous side of the band.

Punk Rock after the Ramones

      As mentioned, in July, 1976, the Ramones played two shows in London: the Roundhouse on the 4^th and Dingwalls on the 5^th. The reputation of the band preceded them. The Ramones were met by hoards of punks wearing leather, ripped clothes, safety pins, and colored hair, wanting to start fights with the band (Leigh ibid). Johnny Rotten was concerned that the Ramones would beat him up should he visit them backstage (Fields 2016). I also mentioned that in August of 1976 the Ramones played a series of shows in California. Punk rock, so labeled, spread like wild fire in the wake of the Ramones showing up in these cultural hotspots.

      By January, 1977, the Ramones had two full-length records on the market: Ramones and Leave Home. This was one month before the Damned’s Damned Damned Damned, three months before the Clash’s first record, and a full nine months before the seminal Nevermind the Bullocks by the Sex Pistols. The same is true in L.A. where the Zeros[ix], Weirdos, and Germs all released 7” singles in 1977, after the release of Leave Home, and the Germs would not release their debut full-length LP until 1979. The sonic, visual, and verbal genre codes presented by these bands are markedly punk, the influence of the Ramones on them is unmistakable.

      After the initial crystallization of the genre in 1977, punk rock developed standardized codes. Following the Ramones, punk had to be fast and simple; three-chord songs clocking in at less than three minutes became the norm. Group Sex, L.A. band the Circle Jerks first LP, released in 1980, contains fourteen songs in 15:25; the tempo of the songs is supersonic, leaving Ramones’ songs in the beats per minute dust. Similarly, the Descendents debut, Milo Goes to College (1982), presents 15 songs in 23 minutes. This latter album filters the hardcore rage of bands like Black Flag through the pop sensibilities of the Ramones; it even has songs with Ramonesesque titles like “I Wanna be a Bear,” “I’m Not a Loser,” and “I’m Not a Punk.” The new hardcore punk quickly crystallized into a genre of its own: Black Flag, Bad Religion, the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Jody Fosters Army, the Big Boys, and Bad Brains all borrowed from the sonic blitz and social commentary introduced by the Ramones; the last of these bands taking their moniker from the Ramones song of the same name.

Visually, as punk moved into hardcore the Ramones leather and jeans look became ubiquitous. California punks wore their t-shirts ripped, like their jeans, and added biker boots to the look, ditching the sneakers (although keeping the Converse Chuck Taylors). In England, leather was festooned with pins and paint, the clothes more overtly fashinista than in America. Artists and fans’ hair got shorter as they embraced punk and rejected the hippie music from which it was born; and like the clothing, punk hair became fantastic: colored Mohawks and skinheads were the rule rather than the exception.

      The Ramones stayed true to their style through the crystallization of punk and hardcore punk rock.  Even through the departures of founding members Tommy and Dee Dee, and the loss and welcoming back of second drummer and long time member Marky[x], the band kept their leather jacket, t-shirt, and sneakers look going; they continued to write lyrics full of pop culture commentary, though they did get darker with time, especially those written by Dee Dee; and they delivered their songs in increasingly rapid tempos, especially live. Even their set-list remained basically the same, focusing on songs from their first four albums, their most popular (Green 2014).

      The Ramones dedication to a set of verbal, visual, and sonic codes can be interpreted a number of ways. Their fans argue they never sold out, an accusation particularly loathsome in the punk community. Despite the fickle changes in tastes of rock music audiences through their two decades of existence, the Ramones pounded away at their pop power chords, singing about absurdities of everyday life, looking and acting like a gang of joyfully dysfunctional New York street thugs without concern for market sensibilities. One might also argue, however, that under Johnny’s tight grip the band lacked the ability to grow artistically. As the eighties wore on, the Ramones became irrelevant; rock and roll passed them by, their moment of influence faded.

Conclusion

      After their first four records the Ramones catalogue is peppered with good songs, some of them excellent: “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?,” “Chinese Rock,” “Pet Cemetery,” My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg),” “I Don’t Want to Grow Up,” “We Want the Airwaves.” Their influence on the direction of rock music, however, faded as their career progressed. A number of punk and hard rock bands (e.g. the Circle Jerks, Metallica) that admired the Ramones played much faster than them, making the Ramones sound glacial by comparison. The street tough attitude of the band was also adopted as standard wear by a number of other bands: the Germs, Social Distortion, the Exploited. Leather biker jackets, ripped jeans, and t-shirts were de rigueur punk and hardcore fashion throughout the eighties. The Ramones became passé, though always treated by audiences and support personnel with awe and respect.

      Whatever one’s critical stance, there is no doubt the emergence of the Ramones in 1974, and the releases of their first four records in 1976-1978, represents a pivotal moment in the history of rock music. They borrowed sonic, visual, and verbal codes from their rock music forbears and molded them into a uniquely post-sixties, New York City presentation. They played fast and loud like a highly wound freight train, dressed like misfit toys, sang of topics below the moral compass of polite society, and it worked. In their wake was a new genre, punk rock, and then another, hardcore punk rock, and another, speed metal. They may have been dysfunctional and they may have died young, but their place in rock music history goes unchallenged.

References

Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Byrnside,Ronald. 1975. The Formation of a Musical Style: Early Rock,” in Contemporary Music and Music Cultures edited by Charles Hamm, Bruno Nettl, and Ronald Byrnside, pp. 159-92. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Fields, Danny. 2016. “The Ramones’ Manager: They Were the Outcasts, Outsiders. The Smartest People I ever Knew”. The Guardian. Retrieved May 17,2019. (https://www.the guardian.com/music/2016/apr/25/ramones-danny-fields-manager-photographs).

Green, Andy. 2014. “Readers’ Poll: the 10 Best Ramones Albums”. Rolling Stone. Retrieved may 17, 2019. (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/readers-poll-the-10-best-ramones-albums-164624/).

Leigh, Mickey with Legs McNeil. 2009. I Slept with Joey Ramone. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ramone, Dee Dee with Veronica Kofman. 1997. Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones. Boston: De Capo Press.

Ramone, Johnny. 2012. Commando: The Autobiography of Johnny Ramone, edited by John Cafiero with Steve Miller and Henry Rollins. New York: Abrams.

Ramones. 2016. “Timeline”. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (https://www.ramones.com/timeline/)

Smith-Lahrman, Matthew. 2010. “Interview with Steve Albini, 1993”. Perspective. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (smithlahrman.blogspot.com/search/label/steve%20albini).

Sundaybop. “Ramones – CBGB, NYC (September 15^th, 1974)”. Filmed [September 1974]. YouTube video, 06:52. Posted [December 2013]. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwsVWZ-c8Eo.)

Weber, Max. 1904/1949. “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch (ed. and trans.), New York: Free Press.

Weinstein, Deena. 1991. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington Books.

Discography

Circle Jerks. 1980. Group Sex. Frontier Records.

Clash. 1977. The Clash. CBS Records.

Damned. 1977. Damned Damned Damned. Stiff Records.

Descendents. 1982. Milo Goes to College. New Alliance Records.

Germs. 1977. “Forming”/”Sex Boy”. What? Records.

Germs. 1979. (GI). Slash Records.

Ramones.  1976. Ramones. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1977. Leave Home. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1977. Rocket to Russia. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1978. Road to Ruin. Sire Records.

Sex Pistols. 1977. Nevermind the Bullock, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Virgin Records.

Velvet Underground. 1967. Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve Records.

Weirdos. 1977. “Destroy All Music” b/w “A Life of Crime” and “Why Do You Exist?”. Bomp! Records.

Zeros. 1977. “Wimp” b/w “Don’t Push Me Around”. Bomp! Records.

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[i] Genre stages should be understood as what sociologist Max Weber termed an “Ideal type” (Weber 1904/1949, 90), a fictionalized model by which to measure empirical reality. As such, actual genres will move through the stages in unique ways.

[ii] To avoid confusion, I will refer to the members of the Ramones by their stage names even in instances prior to their adoptions.

[iii] Joey’s brother Mitchell Lee Hyman adopted the stage name Mickey Leigh as an uncredited backing vocalist on The Ramones.

[iv] Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers

[v] Three of 1976’s best selling records.

[vi] All four band members are credited with writing the songs on their early records because the final product was seen as a group effort.

[vii] The title “Pinhead” and the “Gabba Gabba Hey” refrain are lifted from the Tod Browning directed film Freaks (1932) which included three microcephalic characters, “pinheads.” During live performances the Ramones’ “pinhead” would deliver a “Gabba Gabba Hey” sign to Joey for the songs’ final refrain.

[viii] “Do You Want to Dance” was written and originally recorded by Bobby Freeman in 1958; it was recorded as “Do You Wanna Dance” by the Beach Boys in 1964. “Surfin’ Bird” was a novelty hit for The Trashmen in 1963; it was written by John Harris, Turner Wilson Jr., Alfred Frazier, and Carl White (the Trashmen). “Needles and Pins”, written by Sony Bono and Jack Nietshe, was first recorded by Jackie Deshannon in 1963 and then the Searchers in 1964.

[ix] The Zeros, from Chula Vista, California, were known as the Mexican Ramones.

[x]  Not to mention C. J. and Richie.